November 20, 2017

Ears to Hear

Devotion for the Week...

One of the kids I used to babysit was born almost completely deaf. When he was a year old he had cochlear implant surgery and his cochlears allow him to hear. It really is amazing what medical science can do!

The device hooks over his ear and there is a small disk that attaches to his head, just behind his ear. The disk is magnetic and connects to a magnet placed inside his skin. I don't really understand how they work, so you'll have to forgive my lack of technical knowledge here. What I do know is that the disk has to be connected to his head or he can't hear anything. Even though the device is in place and the lights are blinking to say the batteries are good, if the disk is knocked off, he hears nothing.

Jesus often said, "Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear." Sometimes it was at the end of a parable, as in Mark 4:9. Sometimes it was when He was teaching, as in Luke 14:35.

In Revelation, He said "Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches" at the end of each of the letters to the churches in chapters 2 and 3.

I remember once when I read it with the boys when they were younger and one of them asked what Jesus meant. We all have ears, he was thinking. And he's right, of course. We all have ears and the people in Jesus' day all had ears too.

But I think what Jesus meant was that some of us have had that little disk knocked off, spiritually speaking. Our ears are working and taking in the words that are being said, but the message isn't being transmitted to our minds and hearts. We hear nothing, spiritually, despite having heard the words.
Devotions on Christian living | DevotedQuilter.blogspot.com
Think about it this way...when Nathan starts talking to me, but before he's finished Zachary is calling to me from another room, it's really hard for me to focus on what Nathan is saying. The distraction takes my focus off what I was hearing first.

God is always saying something to us, whether it's through the Bible, a sermon, a devotion we read, something we hear from a friend or in a song, or something we read. There will be a phrase or a thought that keeps swirling around in our heads, calling for us to ponder it and see how it should be applied in our lives.

But life is full of distractions. There are gadgets and to-do lists and situations that pull our attention away from what God is trying to say to us. If we're not careful, all of those distractions will knock the spiritual disk off and the swirling messages will be silenced.

We have to choose to keep the disk connected so we truly hear those messages. We have to choose to focus on the spiritual even though the physical is so loud and distracting.

Then, when we are paying attention, that's when we have ears to hear what God is saying to us.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking the time to leave me a message. I love hearing from you.